


Time brings forth and time takes away

by DVwrites



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Berevement, Death, Gen, Implied arguments, M/M, Modern AU, implied everything, time travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 20:21:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DVwrites/pseuds/DVwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire was a genius in love, and this made him stupider than he’d ever been before, and yet twice as brilliant. A story about a genius' attempt at time travel where time travel seemed necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time brings forth and time takes away

Grantaire was a genius.

Amongst all the literary trappings there and the thoughts like a piquant beehive thrumming a constant noise, there were the mechanics of a magnificent specimen of mind that still fought against whatever liquor sought to dull it down. Grantaire used it so little that he might as well have passed away long before and given it away to be studied, where they’d take it apart, piece by piece, remark that it was something incredible just so that his spectre could laugh itself stupid in the corner. Or at least, this is what he’d often say should happen.

Grantaire was a genius that fancied himself one of three things, dependent on the occasion; drunk, loud, or dead. He looked to himself as an alcoholic looked to his reflection in the morning, seeing himself sober with all the after effects of a man gone through his own hell and looking about as pitiful as a lost dog in a street puddle and he couldn’t find a singular thing good about that image.

But despite these things, and his unrecognised and smothered down talent, he was a man surrounded by friends who loved him for more than just his good humour, and skewed social grace. Grantaire easily and freely loved them in return, though none as much as Enjolras. Enjolras was neither a genius, nor a skeptic, nor anything that could relate to Grantaire on his down to earth level as the metaphorical dog in the street watching the wealthy, beautiful young man walk past him, and wishing to go home with him.

Grantaire was a genius in love, and this made him stupider than he’d ever been before, yet twice as brilliant. And then on his 23rd birthday, Grantaire had found himself in the beginnings of a, well, romance with the unapproachable leader in red and he surmised his thought up greek tragedy over, for once and for all, and spent hundreds of days with Enjolras where his nights were stimulating and enjoyable and the genius supposed that his brain could go to charity now, because all that mattered was his heart, and he was oh so foolish to think that life was going to let him have this happiness.

21st October. It wasn’t a protest. It wasn’t the government. It wasn’t a passing car, or an electric wire, or bad food. Of course it wasn’t; this was Enjolras.

On the 21st, R made to walk home with their chief, but forgot his house keys. He waved Enjolras on ahead, said to meet him outside the park so that they could walk through together. They’d fought – Grantaire was drunk. They always fought when Grantaire was drunk.

Outside that park, four men attempted to mug Enjolras. Their attempt failed in that they didn’t successfully mug him. They did, however, shoot him. Not once, but eight times. In a moment’s cruel tryst, fate had dictated that it had taken more than one bullet to fell Enjolras, and fall he did and not a single one of R's metaphors could really describe it.

Grantaire had grabbed himself another drink, knowing that Enjolras would have taken the long way around and, knowing a short cut, could have met him there on time. Enjolras bled by the park gate for almost an hour before Grantaire found him.

For the four hours in hospital, he thought of Icarus, and how that boy had felt the moment his fingers had touched the brilliance of the sun, falling by his own work moments later. That’s how he felt, he thought, as he stared at the clock. As if he were falling.

\--

Grantaire was a genius, and love had made him realise this.

The months passing Enjolras’ death had been tense. More so when Grantaire hadn’t turned up to the funeral.

The arguments with Courfeyrac had been brisk – when he’d waved Jehan off with ‘I’m building something great’, the other had offered him the most worried look he’d ever seen. It’s a robot, Courfeyrac suggested. A shrine, Bahorel quipped in. Combeferre suggested they let Grantaire bereave and he’d come around. But Grantaire was a genius, and he was almost done.

No longer was he Icarus, but Daedalus when he’d fabricated his escape. He was like a new age Daedalus, he supposed; trapped not by a physical captor but by this world that fate had kept him in, a world without Apollo, without Enjolras. And this work was his wings. His work was breaching completion and as he punched in the numbers, he felt himself smile. Something he hadn’t done for months.

The genius had built a time machine, and rather than go back and stop the creation of Hitler or go back to shake Ghandi’s hand, which he, though as a second thought, considered fixed events, or rather than share it with the outside world, this genius was going to go back to the outside of a park, on an important night.

21ST OCTOBER

\--

Courfeyrac had never once knocked on Grantaire’s door to gain entry, but this one time, he did. He pushed in, none the less, at Grantaire’s half-hearted ‘come in’, and was immediately hit by the sight of machinery, as well as the man himself, who was leant cradling a bottle of absinthe and seemed to be in a half coma, his jaw leant against the flat of his palm against the desk.

“This is it, then?”

Grantaire murmured an affirmative and watched through half lidded eyes as Courf touched all of the wires in turn, wondering over them.

“What is it, R?”

“A time machine.” He couldn’t pretend to have not seen the confused, if not disbelieving look that Courfeyrac had on his face now. He shook his head, straightening his back a little.

“A genuine time machine, Courf. It works.”

“R, it’s been months since Enj left. We’re all still a little…well, my apartment has never felt the same, y’know?” The laugh that tumbled from his lips was hollow and dry, and not like Courfeyrac at all. It sounded like it hurt, and R felt something like sympathy twinge in him.

“You think I’m crazy,” R laughed, and took a swig at the bottle, standing up.

“Not…crazy, just…I think you need to take a break,” Courfeyrac began, “I know you’ve been none stop thinking about Enj’s death-,”

“I’ve been non-stop watching Enj’s death,” Grantaire interrupted, the dark lines beneath his eyes becoming more apparent as he tiredly looked towards the whiteboard, gesturing to it. Courf followed the gesture, and his brows furrowed.

“One hundred and forty three,” He echoed. “One hundred and forty three failed attempts, Courf,” R continued, eyelashes lowering, fingers tapping against the neck of the bottle.

“Every time I go back, I fail to do anything, since I’m only material enough to affect my surroundings and not be seen. Once, I got the muggers to run off, and he was stabbed by someone else in the park,” Now Grantaire laughed, and the sound was definitely painful. “Either way, one hundred and forty threed attempts have ended in Enjolras dying that night, no matter what I do.”

Courfeyrac was silent for a moment, before he touched the stray mark at the corner of the board.

“What’s this one?”

R took a long swig this time. “That one? I went back to that night on his birthday. I stayed and watched us all throw that surprise party, and then I stayed to watch him kiss me. Right until the power ran out on the machine and I was brought back here.”

Another moment of silence, before Courf took the drink out of his hand, and pulled R into an embrace.

“I’m sorry, R,” “

Me too,” Grantaire managed back, faintly, relaxing as if he couldn’t hold the weight of his muscles anymore into Courfeyrac’s arms.

\--

It had taken one hundred and forty three attempts for Grantaire to figure out where he was going wrong. He realised that nothing could cease Enjolras’ death because the catalyst that caused it still existed, and that was what brought him to a new batch of attempts.

And that was to make sure that Enjolras never fell in love with him.

He’d done everything to that night when Enjolras had realized it – he’d broken up the kiss. Enjolras would never set into motion those events that led to his attempt at picking R up from the bar, and his walking home. None of that would have happened. And then R transferred himself to the 21st, stomach twisting, expecting to see the outside of the park empty, and he wasn’t wrong.

Up until he heard footsteps, and Enjolras, walking alone, appeared. His stomach sank. When he returned, his trembling fingers etched another line on the board.

\--

Grantaire was a genius. A genius that had finally figured it out. He couldn’t stop Enjolras from loving him, no more than he could stop his death. But Grantaire had missed his chance for death numerous times, and had been so precariously on the edge and narrowly missed it so often that it wasn’t difficult. All it took was a gentle nudging, and he managed to remember his keys that night.

He walked with Enjolras, and Grantaire watched them walk off. When he returned to the present, he felt…hollow. As if he wasn’t really there, or wasn’t meant to be. His time machine wasn’t. His belongings weren’t – as if someone had cleared them out. And then he felt it. The tingling spreading along his skin like a fire, though there was no pain, and he began to fade.

It had worked! On the 21st, the genius took five of those bullets meant for Enjolras, and his Apollo died by the one to his head. Together.

Enjolras hadn't died alone. R could live with that. 

Or, as his tampered fate had decided - not. 

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short 'sketch' of an idea!
> 
> Considering panning it out and changing it so that it has chapters and a different ending - let me know what you think! <3 ;;


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